Online sports network Pitchero has struck an exclusive deal with Perform to monetise its multiplatform UK audiences via a range of formats including audience sponsorship and branded content opportunities.
The deal will see sports media specialist Perform, which owns football site Goal.com, monetise all digital ads across Pitchero’s network, which hosts 10,000 sports clubs sites, 70 per cent of which are UK rugby clubs, 6,000 football club websites, 1,400 cricket websites and 300 hockey club websites.
Perform will provide exclusive sports content including Six Nations coverage, via its video-on-demand sports ePlayer which will run across Pitchero’s network of sites, comprising a monthly audience of 3.5m sports fans.
This additional content will be monetised with pre-roll and display ad formats across devices while there will also future branded content and geo-targeting opportunities across mobile devices.
The deal marks the latest step in Perform’s wider strategy to provide a network of premium publishers to monetise their audiences at scale.
Perform managing director of UK sales Jamie Wilson told The Drum the audiences across the sites Pitchero powers are highly engaged sports fans and players rather than casual readers, making them compelling for advertisers.
“Advertisers don’t necessarily just want people who read about sports they want people who play sports. The vast majority of people visiting the Pitchero sites are sports players themselves – it is a community – a must-have for advertisers.
Perform can now provide “unrivalled” mass reach for advertisers within a premium publisher environment, according to Wilson.
“It is easy to gain mass reach but sometimes the quality is lacking. For example I could easily go and get 400m ad impressions on various blog sites about sports but that’s not what we want to do – we want to build a premium network. If you want to buy football across half a dozen or a dozen premium football sites – the mass reach this will give you will be unrivalled,” he said.
Perform acquired Goal.com in 2011 as part of plans to bolster its direct-to consumer business having previously centred its strategy largely on B2B activity and the syndication of its video-on-demand sports ePlayer to third-party publishers.
The acquisition led to a 163 per cent spike in UK traffic to goal.com within a few months, taking the total at the time to over 5m unique users.